The early commercial travellers, in fact, were long known as “riders,” from their custom of riding horseback from town to town, sometimes with a led pack-horse when their samples were unusually bulky or heavy. The “London riders” sometimes found mentioned in old literature were therefore London commercials. The successive names by which these “ambassadors of commerce,” as they have sometimes been grandiloquently styled, were known are themselves highly illuminating. They were, in succession, “bagmen,” “riders,” “travellers,” and “commercial gentlemen.” They are now “representatives.”
CHAPTER III
DAWN OF THE COACHING AGE
Meanwhile the first stage-coaches had been put upon the chief roads out of London, and had begun to ply between the capital and the principal towns. Stage-coaches are, on insufficient authority, said to have begun about 1640, but no particulars are available in support of that statement, and in considering this point we are bound to look into the social state of England at that time, and to consider the likelihood or otherwise of a public service of coaches being continued throughout those stormy years which preceded, accompanied, and followed the great Civil War that opened with the raising of the King’s standard at Nottingham in 1642, and ended with the Battle of Naseby in June 1645. That victory ended the war in favour of the Parliament men, but the political troubles and their attendant social displacements continued.
It has been said that hawking parties pursued their sport between the opposed armies on Marston Moor, and the inference has been drawn that the nation was not disturbed to its depths by what we are usually persuaded was a tremendous struggle between King and Parliament. Certainly the Associated Counties of East Anglia were little affected by the contest, but theirs was an exceptional experience, brought about by that association, entered upon for mutual protection against either side, and to prevent the scene of warfare being pitched within those limits. It is not likely that any service of coaches ran in the disturbed period, when confidence was so rudely shaken; and it was not until the Commonwealth had been established some years that the first coaching advertisement of which we have any knowledge appeared.
In writing thus, it is not forgotten that somewhere about the year 1610 a foreigner from the wilds of Pomerania obtained a Royal patent granting him, for the term of fifteen years, the exclusive right of running coaches or waggons between Edinburgh and Leith. We have no details of this purely local service, but it is to be supposed that it was little more than a stage-waggon carrying goods and passengers too infirm to ride horseback between Edinburgh and its seaport. We are equally ignorant of the length of time the service lasted.
The next reference to stage-coaches is equally detached and inconclusive. It is found in a booklet issued by John Taylor, describing a journey he made to the Isle of Wight in 1648. He and his party set out on October 19th to see the captive Charles the First, their “gracious Soveraigne, afflicted Lord and Master,” imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle. They “hired the Southampton Coach, which comes weekly to the Rose, near Holborn Bridge”—a statement that at least proves the existence of a public vehicle of sorts. But it is the first and last reference to the Southampton Coach that has come down these two hundred and fifty-odd years. If Taylor tells us nothing of its history, he at least gives a description of the journey that retains something of its original amusing qualities, and, with the lapse of time, becomes something of an historic document:—
We took our coach, two coachmen and four horses,
And merrily from London made our courses.
We wheel’d the top of th’ heavy hill call’d Holborne
(Up which hath been full many a sinful soule borne),
And so along we jolted past St. Gileses,
Which place from Brainford six (or neare) seven miles is.
To Stanes that night at five o’clock we coasted,
Where (at the Bush) we had bak’d, boyl’d, and roasted.
Bright Sol’s illustrious Rayes the day adorning,
We past Bagshot and Bawwaw Friday morning.
That night we lodg’d at the White Hart at Alton,
And had good meate—a table with a salt on.
Next morn w’arose with blushing cheek’d Aurora;
The waves were faire, but not so faire as Flora,
For Flora was a goddesse, and a woman,
And (like the highwayes) to all men was Common.
Our Horses, with the Coach, which we went into,
Did hurry us amaine, through thick and thine too;
With fiery speede, the foaming bit they champt on,
And brought us to the Dolphin at Southampton.
Southampton, eighty miles from their starting-point, was therefore a three days’ journey in the autumn of 1648. That they were careful not to be on the road after dark is evident from the time they got to Staines, the first stopping-place. The sun sets at exactly 5 p.m. on October 19th.
The reference to a place called “Bawwaw,” between Bagshot and Alton, is not to be explained by any scrutiny of maps.